Lucy and Ethel went to D.C.... in the rain.

My mom, my aunt, and my cousin came out to visit me in D.C. a little over a week ago. They happened to bring with them rain, sleet, wind and temperatures in the forties. Let's see, humidity + wind chill + temps in the 40s = DANG COLD.

We had many adventures and ended up losing/breaking/demagnetizing two umbrellas, a camera, two metro cards, and quite nearly our sanity.

But it was really great to see my family and show them around the city I love, even if it was colder than spit.

In the Capitol rotunda. Dayna inspecting her camera after a mishap with...dropping it on the floor.

Good ol' Brigham Young

The cool little train-ish thing we got to take under the Capitol. (We didn't want to walk outside, it was cold and wet!)

Trying to manage umbrellas, cameras, blankets in the wind and rain.

Confession: HSM

There I said it. It's out in the open. I like the High School Musical (HSM) movies.

No, you don't understand. I really like the HSM movies.

I like the energy, I like the dancing, I like the music, I like the cheesy jokes, I like the you-are-not-locked-into-your-stereotype theme, I like that it's fun, and I think Zac Efron* is dreamy.

For those of you scoffing right now, my defense is this:

• There are worse things to be obsessed with (e.g. Halo, Facebook, RPGs).

• High school IS overly dramatic, cheesy, contrived, fun and ridiculous, remember?

• If I lived my life solely to please others( i.e. pretend not to like HSM as much as I really do), I would deprive the world of the many refreshing quirks in my personality.

*For the record, Zac Efron is older than me.

Even I'm flabbergasted

I have 167.5 credits at BYU.

I still have three semesters left.

HOLY. COW.

On looking Scandinavian

A few weeks ago someone asked me where my family was from. After replying that I grew up in Utah, he asked where my ancestors were from. I told him my dad's side comes from Norway. He looked pleased and started nodding, "ah, that's where the eyes are from."

I was surprised by our conversation because I don't look tremendously like anyone in my family. How could I look like my great-grandpa was born in Norway?

Then, after weeks of arranging schedules and one random run-in on the metro, I found (or rather, re-found) a cousin who proved that I wasn't adopted from Norway and shipped to the U.S. as a child.

Ahem. I present to you--the nebulous, expansive internet--Jenna and Lynne, the floaters in the Gabrielsen gene pool:

Ice cream in Annapolis (bless the person who invented chocolate fudge)

Okay, I'm not related to this guy, but I was drawn to him all the same...

In front of the Nited States Aval Academy.

The little things

It's official: the starbursts (tropical, of course) that I keep at work have gone stale.

This is great news because it means I didn't consume the entire bag in 48 hours, like I did with my last candy purchase (mini-heath bars).

It's the little things in life that make you happy.

My favorite street performers

Like most big cities, D.C. has a few street performers. Some play jazz on a trumpet or saxophone with a back track, one guy plays his steel drum, and as you saw in a previous post, some play crystal glasses.

But these guys are my favorite. Everytime I come across them, I want to buy their album, but I never have any cash!

At least this time I had a camera. Here is a glimpse of their genius.

Older men hit on younger women here. And it's weird.

For your enjoyment, an anecdote to illustrate my small-town, Utah naivety:

It was my second week in D.C. I had just gone to my first hearing on the Hill and was riding home on the metro. I was wearing a fantastic suit from Calvin Klein and carrying my laptop, so I imagine I looked a few years older than 21.

I stood up because my stop was coming up, and as I did so, a man stood up to give me something. At first I thought he was just being nice and trying to give me his old metro pass, because he said, "I think you should take this." He had a weird look on his face. Enough to make me wonder if he was all the way "there" mentally, even though he looked well enough put together.

I realized that he was handing me a business card, not a metro pass.

I stupidly said something like, "are you sure don't need this?"

He replied, "take it if you ever need a contact in the military". And then smiled a weird smile. Yep, I thought, lost his marbles.

As I was riding the escalator up to the surface, staring at this business card, "Dept. of Defense, Saudi Arabia Program Director," I realized what had just happened and gasped out loud.

And then I laughed, because it's not every day that I get hit on by a military officer in his 40s.